Syzygy Consciousness

Syzygy consciousness is james-hillman‘s term, developed in the Syzygy chapter of hillman-anima-anatomy-personified (1985), for a mode of self-awareness that recognizes every psychic position as already paired — that sees anima wherever animus appears, and animus wherever anima appears. “Syzygy consciousness is of and within a tandem; it is an awareness of being in a particular pairing, the dynamics of which are best described by myths. (Psycho-dynamics is one of the things mythology is all about.)” (Hillman 1985).

Hillman distinguishes the concept sharply from Jung’s interpersonal syzygy. Jung’s diagram in psychology-of-the-transference (CW 16 §§422–23) tracks four relational lines — ego to ego, ego to contrasexual, anima to animus — between two persons. Hillman takes the fourth of these — anima-animus within any single psyche — and makes it the primary datum. “The archetypal syzygy takes place inside us each and not only as projected into our relationships. That’s why men carry on and talk like animuses, and women gaze and fade like animas” (ibid.).

The practical discipline: at every moment, ask where is the other? “When we feel we have caught a glimpse of anima in an image, mood, or projection, the immediate next question is ‘where is animus?’ Most likely it is in the perceiving ego itself that has made the observation possible” (Hillman 1985). Each anima figure constellates a specific animus figure — “A Hebe wants a Hercules” — and vice versa. The coniunctio is, on this reading, not an event but a structural fact of psychic life: “spirit will be constellated whenever we are in touch with soul” (ibid.).

Syzygy consciousness converges with polytheistic-psychology and plural-psyche: it replaces the monocentric ego with a grammar of tandems. It is the operational form of Hillman’s claim that psyche is always already pluralized.

Relationships

Primary sources

hillman-anima-anatomy-personified (Hillman 1985, chapter on Syzygy)
psychology-of-the-transference (Jung 1954, CW 16 §§422–23)